I have decided to junk all old control stuff

You're not as smart as Julie. She knows better than to agree with me.

Karl

Many times it is easier to do your own instead of trying to figure out what someone else did. My Anilam systems simply had motors with tachometers going to the drives and encoders going to the controls. Maybe you can use some of your parts in your retrofit. For emergency stops it's nice to kill the power to the drives but leave power on the PC and encoders so you don't crash the PC and lose position everytime you have to hit the E-stop.

Have you thought of any G-code generating scripts you can write? Maybe tapered pipe threading or spirals. When you get it ready perhaps you can make me some jaws for my 3 jaw chuck, it would be a wonderful learning opportunity for you :-) It would be kind of interesting to figure the minimum and maximum radius for each tooth on each jaw spaced out at

120degrees, and write a program to cut the teeth to properly engage the scroll. Or maybe just properly spaced dowel pins and lots of grease!

Anyway, I hope you have a fun and educational learning experience, maybe your son will be interested too. It will be nice for you to know the machine inside out, when there is a problem or you need an upgrade you'll be able to handle it yourself. No $2K boards!

RogerN

I've got two of the old chucks with non reversible jaws. Below is the program to cut teeth for the 6" buck adjust true chuck. I make new softjaws about 1/year and let this program run while I do something else. Its a very old program, originally written for my DOS based Ahha control. I'd re-write it for my modern Camsoft control, but it works. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Karl

;TEETH,ADJUST TRUE SOFT JAWS ;set second jaw back 0.100", third back 0.200"

%LAPPER = 0 %ZDEPTH = 0.5000

%START: %COUNTER = 0 %ZDEPTH = %ZDEPTH + 0.025 *;DEPTH OF CUT FOR EACH PASS %LAPPER = %LAPPER + 1

G92 X 0.00 Y 0.00 Z %ZDEPTH G90 G00 X 0.000 Y -0.250 Z 0.00

%LOOP: %COUNTER = %COUNTER + 1

G42 T 02 G01 X 0.008 Y 0.000 F 3.0 G01 X 0.122 Y 0.000 G03 X 0.096 Y 0.750 I -1.304 J 0.330 G01 X 0.000 Y 0.750 G02 X 0.008 Y 0.000 I -3.986 J -0.420 G01 X 0.008 Y -0.125 G01 G 40 X 0.2857 Y -0.25 G92 X 0.000 Y -0.25 Z 0.00

IF (%COUNTER LE 9) GOTO %LOOP

G54 G00 X 0.00 Y 0.00 Z 0.00

IF (%LAPPER LE 5) GOTO %START *;DO ALL TEETH 5 TIMES

Roger, I thought about G code, but not too much. I know that I can handle G code and generate it in fun way with perl and such.

My main concern right now is producing a system that is SAFE to operate (properly takes all safety inputs into account) and that is properly designed to be usable and not weird. Then I will try to make sure that it is accurate by defining various parameters correctly.

i

I'm sure you can. I suspect your G code is going to be heavy into using macro functionality since you are a coder. My first production PLC program didn't look like most PLC programs because I wrote it like a guy used to procedural languages. The plant electrician thought my approach was a bit weird.

Make sure you have e-stops where you can get at them. Over travel limit switches to protect the axes. Sane parameters and circuitry so if the control system determines there is a problem, it can force an e-stop.

Wes

-- "Additionally as a security officer, I carry a gun to protect government officials but my life isn't worth protecting at home in their eyes." Dick Anthony Heller

my years as a corporate engineer upgrading old machine burned in to me that safety is job 1.

All my CNC machines have two STOP buttons.

Estop kills the machine no matter what. Red palm buttons where ever you need them and one Reset button operate a self latching master control relay (MCR). Every device that moves something has a contactor or relay in front of it and the control power comes from MCR.

There's actually a weakness in Estop as motors will coast to a stop, a problem on huge machines. But you need it in case something got done incorrectly somewhere (work in a corporation and you wouldn't believe how much this happens)

So, there's also a Machine stop. These buttons are red and smaller and placed near the Estop and also machine start and anywhere else that makes sense. This button uses the control to bring in brakes and stop the machine quickly. Do things like a brake resistor on your VFD, inhibit on your servo drives, have the control also issue spindle off, axis stop (covers a lot of mistakes if you stop things two or more ways)

Just my two cents

Karl

I don't know yet Wes. Maybe I will make G codes with procedural languages. If so, then G codes will look kind of dumb.

I agree. I think that my plans are solidifying a little bit.

My first priority is installing encoders, and hooking them up to Jon's PPMC box and that, to CNC. The axes would not be powered by servo drives.

I will make up a little mill control, from a little DC power supply, X-Y-Z selector, and On-Off-On switch, hooked up to the servos.

I would operate this control manually by hand.

With that, the mill will be manual controlled and will use PPMC as just a DRO display.

The objective here would be to see if all the iron works, to debug all estop logic, limit switches, inhibits, etc. The mill will be 100% manually operated, but with the PC and PPMC working as a DRO.

Then I will try to fit it with a VFD.

At that point, it could be used for milling, like a regular Bridgeport.

I would then make sure that all auxiliary things run correctly, like speed control air valves, coolant etc.

The next step would be to hook up the drive power supply (military battery charger) and AMC servo drives and imlpement proper automatic control.

The advantage of this is that I could spend a couple of weeks debugging this mill's safety and other functions, being almost 100% safe due to manual control of the positioning.

i

Wrong. You won't be able to use this like a regular Bridgeport because you won't have control to stop on a precise DRO position, nor will you have the load feedback the manual handwheels provide. All you will be able to do from a practical perspective is confirm that the limit switches and encoder are working properly.